I thought I could reformat a friends hard drive. but when I try, I get "format not supported on drive C. format terminated." also when I run fdisk /status.."no fixed disk present." Sys C: is an invalid function.

Are you booting from a floppy? You cannot format the C: drive if you are currently on the C: Drive - Windows is stopping you 'pulling the rug from under yourself'.

I have to 'cause I'm getting disk boot failure. Before I get an A: It reads: Windows detected drive c does not contain valid fat or fat32 partitions. May need partitioned. Run fdisk. (when I do this..No fixed disk present.) Thank you for your help since I don't have a clue!!

It doesn't make much sense for the boot disk to load up to the DOS prompt and then say that it found a drive C but also that there's no hard disk (how did it manage to find drive C then?!).

What operating system are you trying to install? Windows 98? Is that what was on the hard disk before?

Do you know how to go into the BIOS? Check that the primary hard disk is being properly detected and isn't set to 'Auto'.

I thought the same thing!! I'm installing windows 98se. it had 98 before. No, I've never gone into BIOS before.

How do I do that?

Is the drive NTFS.

ie has it being used by or held a 2000 or XP (probably ME?) system?

HippyWarlock - No, that's what I was asking. If it had Windows 98 on the hard disk before, then it can only be FAT16 or FAT32.

Urs - Read my article in the Member's PC Help Articles section of the forum about auto-detecting hard disks. That explains it fully.

Please understand I've never done anything beyond pushing the button to start my computer and reformatting the hard drive (even that was scarey the first time!!) So...open it up and take something out?? If you say so...
This is what I read in standard CMOS setup: primary master TYPE: user MODE:LBA every thing else matches what I noted when I took out the hard drive BUT the CYLS. they are different numbers. I can only highlight user and LBA (mode). Not sure how to change these (if I need to??) I sure appreciate your help.

Aha! Well, if the number of cylinders (CYLS) is wrong, then it will get confused. Go back into the BIOS to the screen where it listed your hard drive and reported the Type as 'User'. See if you can change that entry so that it says 'Auto' (the key you need to press to change that option will depend on what BIOS you have ... but it should tell you which keys to use at the bottom or top of the screen).

When you've got the Type to say 'Auto', make sure that the Mode also says 'Auto'. If it doesn't, change that in the same way.

Exit the BIOS, saving the changes, and the PC will reboot and try to auto-detect your hard disk each time it starts up from now on.

Let us know if it manages to fix itself - if it doesn't, we can fix it the manual way